And Back Again
by Lily5
Summary: Oz is moved, and not just in the emotional sense. The latest OzMIA Round Robin, post "Same Time, Same Place."
1. Parts 1 through 6

Title: ...And Back Again

Authors: the OzMIA RR gang: Lily, Vashti, Karen, MD, quantumLiz, Tabitha, and Little Faith.

Spoilers: Through "Same Time, Same Place"

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: The only thing we own is the weirdness.

Summary: Round Robin Fic from Oz: Missing In Action.

Oz fans: Check out OzMIA at ozmia.com or on egroups. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willow sat in the Summers' backyard. Her things were not yet unpacked,   
but she didn't feel in a rush. Her friends' acceptance of her had been a   
major relief, but she was still uncomfortable being back home.

It was almost dark, and she was alone. All ten of her fingers were pressed into the lawn in front of her. It would be nice to be back in Westbury, she thought. A simple English wildflower bloomed between her hands. Everything was connected at the roots. Everything.

Curious, she turned her gaze to the patio furniture sitting across the yard. She could feel the wood it had been made of, growing from a tiny seed. It came from Washington State and she could feel the stump grieving. She blinked and the chair was sitting in front of her. She blinked again and it moved to a random spot on the lawn. Trying out the  
ability to move things, she thought harder about the chair and about the world, all connected everywhere. The chair disappeared. She willed it back.

She could feel the ants in the ground, crawling under her. They were connected too. It was hot for October, and her mind wandered. This had been her first summer out of Sunnydale since she had gone to sleepaway camp when she was twelve. She had missed home. Despite the bad things that had happened in her Sunnydale summers. And here she was, feeling all of Sunnydale, all of world, moving in the earth beneath her fingertips. Good things had happened in Sunnydale summers too; summers in Sunnydale,  
California, Planet Earth, where everything was connected and it was all moving. Summers where Xander kissed ice cream off her nose, where she finally got up the nerve to cut her hair, where she woke up to Oz's green eyes every morning...

But ther had been last time he had checked.

"Huh?"

**end part one**

There was something about existing in the same room for most of one's life to make one familiar with it. Even when one should be in a cheap hotel in New York with several other under-funded twenty-somethings -- waking up with them in fact instead of the aforementioned room. Which must have been turned into a guest-room. Oz didn't remember it being this flowery.

"This isn't usual," Oz muttered to himself. Not that he minded waking up in a soft, clean, albeit floral, bed for once. Not that he wasn't enjoying the Lycanthrope Convention, but sleeping with two women hadn't been turning out quite the way Devon said it would.  
Of course they were cheetahs....

***

"I'm so glad your home. I know I've asked you a thousand times already, but how does it feel?" Dawn asked, sitting at the kitchen island.

Willow thought about it for a moment, trying not to feel Dawn's connection to Buffy, carefully reigning in the magic she had just been testing.

"It feels..."

~!~

"Unnatural." Oz climbed out of the flowery bed and looked around. Nice room, small, furnished, didn't smell like cheetahs. The walls were a muted green. The window was open and a slight breeze was pouring in. Oz approached the window and leaned out. The tree lined street stretched out for miles. It was suburbia alright. But suberbia where?

"Your guess is as good as mine." Xander called out from the open bedroom door. "I woke up in a flowery bed. I've been here for hours, but hey, my room has playstation. I got to level ten and decided to pause it and explore."

Oz smiled. "Hey Xander."

"Hey Oz. Wanna find out what's going on around this big flowery house? Or... we could try and beat level ten..." Oz gave Xander a side long glance. "Right. Explore."

Oz followed Xander out into the hallway. A long red carpet spilled out around corners and down a huge staircase with cherry wood bannisters. Xander talked the whole time, nervously. "So near as I can figure, right in the middle of work I was transported here. I'm hoping this is just a displaced Xander effect and I'd wake up at my house from a sugar induced dream. No such luck. What's your take?"

"Bad pizza?" Oz faced Xander and something occured to him. "Have you always had blue eyes, Xand?"

Xander blinked, "Ah, yeah? You okay Oz? Wait, where's your scar...?"

"What scar?"

"The one you usually sport across your throat? The one from Willow when she   
went nuts and you had to..." Xander's voice lowered, "Kill her..?"

"Huh, definitely a dimensional thing then..." Oz concluded. Xander shrugged.

They walked in silence down the stairs. Creeping up to the front door, they peered outside. The world glittered, leafty and green. A glitch blinked and demons roamed the streets. The glitch flared again and the tree lined streets returned.

"Can I help you?" A voice asked. They spun around to see...

end part two  
----

"Angel?"

Oz stared. Sure, the big skulky lug *looked* enough like Angel, but, something didn't seem quite right. And it wasn't just the fact that he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

"Hey, man," Xander greeted casually. "Nice tan."

Ah, yes. That was it.

"Thanks," answered Angel from behind his pink-tinted sunglasses. "So, can I help you guys?"

"With what?" Xander asked cheerfully. Angel handed each of them a small white card. Oz read his. It said "Angel Investigations" and it gave daytime hours.

"You look a little confused," Angel told them.

A glitch blinked again and the street was dark, crawling with demons. Angel was pale, and dressed in black, and he was smirking rather unpleasantly. Suddenly, everything blinked again and the Vampire-With-A-Tan stood in front of them again in broad daylight, Hawaiian shirt and all.

"Angel," Oz started slowly, grasping for some kind of familiarity in the situation. "Aren't  
you a vampire?"

"Could a vampire do *this*?" Angel challenged, closing his eyes, bracing himself, and promptly morphing into a werewolf.

"Well I don't know, maybe some crazy vampire/werewolf, hybrid," Xander offered helpfully. He seemed unfazed. Oz just stared at the furry, clawed creature now in  
front of him, wondering if that was what he looked like when he changed.

"You look shorter," Xander muttered.

A moment later, Angel morphed back into the tourist look.

"So you're a werewolf," Oz said.

"Aren't you?" Angel asked sounding mildly offended.

Xander sighed rather pathetically.  
"I feel so out of the loop, you guys," he said. "I mean, this whole werewolf thing - how does it feel?"

***

"-floopy," Willow answered.

"Floopy?" Dawn laughed. "It feels floopy?"

"It's just, there's not really a word for it," Willow admitted. "Coming home's made me feel a lot of different things. Scared, happy, nostalgic, lonely. All of those, and yet not quite any of them." She sighed. "When you spend your summer connected to all of nature - understanding the pure essences of things, you get a little rusty with verbal communication."

"You're connected to everything," Dawn repeated.

"Yep," Willow said, a little uncomfortably.

"And I would be included in everything," Dawn said.

"Yes," Willow assented slowly.

"So you can see what I really am?" Dawn guessed, sounding a little unsure.

"You, everyone," Willow said quietly.

"Could - could you maybe show me?" Dawn asked with a kind of timid desperation.

Willow was a little floored by the request.

"Dawnie," she started. "I don't know if that's"

"Because I'd like to know," Dawn rushed on. "What I am. If I'm human, or if I'm  
still some ball of energy in there somewhere."

"Dawn-"

"I have to know," she told Willow rather intensely. Able to fully sense Dawn's urgency, Willow sighed, and nervously resigned herself.

She placed her hands on top of Dawn's head and instructed the girl to close her eyes. Dawn did so, and Willow began the process.

Things were going pretty well. The magic was shimmering around Dawn's head just as it  
should have and the telepathic link was running rather smoothly.

A moment later, however, Willow's concentration was broken rather briskly.

"What the HELL do you think you're doing?" screamed someone from behind them. Willow turned to see...

-----

... a thin, older woman whose glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her eyes flashed fire from behind the spectacles. She looked rather like an angry cat.

"Professor McGonagall?" Willow and Dawn gasped simultaneously. Just as quickly as she had appeared, the professor winked out of the room, and possibly existence.

"Oh no," Willow moaned. "Something is terribly wrong."

Footsteps were heard bounding up the stairs. The door crashed open, and Xander yelled, "What's wrong?!"

He went pale and skidded to a stop. Oz and Angel crashed into him as they, too, pelted through the door. But Xander paid them no attention.

"Willow! You're alive!"

Dawn and Willow exchanged nervous glances.

"And... you're not all demony?"

Dawn squeaked, and Willow covered her face with her hands. The others could just barely hear her moaning, "No, no, this can't be happening."

Oz sighed very quietly to himself. It was strange, he thought. Not the interdimensional teleportation business, but seeing Willow again. It hurt less than he thought. He stepped forward and gently lowered her hands from her face.

"Hey," he said.

She looked up, nervous and lost.

"Dude!" exclaimed a tall, lanky figure with wavy brown hair. "It's just like the T.A.R.D.I.S.!" Devon polished off the brownie he was eating and sidled into the room.

Angel gave him a suspicious glance but moved over slightly. The room was becoming crowded.

"Oz! You bitch! Is this where you've been?" Before Oz could reply, Devon stopped dead in his tracks, transfixed.

"Who," he breathed, "are you?"

Dawn had the strangest tingling feeling all over. Like the hair on her neck was standing up. Or like she was floating away on a cloud of blue cotton candy.

"You'll touch my little sister over my dead body," warned a steely voice.

Her mind reeling, Willow watched over Oz's shoulder as the tan, Hawaiian-shirt-  
clad Angel raised a hand as if to touch Buffy. His hand stopped in mid-air.

"Who," Angel breathed, "are you?"

Oz blinked. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw an organ-grinder's monkey scuttle past. There was a glitch, and the monkey was gone.

Maybe it was a sign, Oz thought.

Willow started shaking her head back and forth. "This isn't happening, this isn't happening," she muttered. Her eyes were wide and frantic.

"It's ok," Oz murmured in a low voice that only Willow could hear. "I can fix this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a....  
____

lightsaber. Momentarily confused, he began closely inspecting it. "Huh. I must have grabbed Luke's by mistake."

Willow looked at him questioningly. "You have a lightsaber?"

"Ran into Luke Skywalker two years ago." Oz shrugged. "Didn't have anything better to do. Plus, Jedi robes go with everything."

"Hey guys, look, Oz is a Jedi," Xander happily called out to the others.

"I think," Willow began to say, very softly, "something's gone wrong with the world as I know it."

"You know, I think I read something about this in the Watcher's Diaries," said the suddenly appearing Rupert Giles. The leather jacket and earring, while very attractive on the man, weren't really in keeping with the Giles they knew, but Oz was willing to take any  
possibility of this making sense. He nodded to the Englishman and . . .

___

"STOP!" Willow interrupted with a scream.

Everyone turned to look at her.

"Geez, dude. What's her problem?" Devon asked Oz.

"My problem," Willow responded with a glare, "is that you are not supposed to   
be here! And there's no such thing as a Jedi! And Harry Potter is fiction! This has *got* to be a dream. You're all inside my head! You aren't real!"

"Um, Willow?" Xander raised his hand as if he were in class.

"What is it Xander?"

"Then why are we here?"

"Because...because we're all connected."

"In a circle, in a hoop that never ends?" Giles asked.

Willow gave him an odd look.

"How high can the sycamore grow?" He continued. "If you cut it down, then you'll never know! And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon, or ask the grinning bobcat why he grins, can you sing..."

"Go home! Everyone!" Willow shut her eyes. Opening them one at a time, she noticed the extreme absence of people. She could hear Dawn watching TV in the other room, but, other than that, everything was quiet. She sighed and turned to go upstairs, but stopped when she noticed that there was one other person in the room.

"Everyone who?"

"What . . . Why are you still here?" Willow asked, dumbfounded.

Oz narrowed his eyes. "I live here?"

"No you don't!"

"Willow, baby, are you okay? I know it's hard and you just got back from Englan--"

"How do you know that?!"

Approaching Willow carefully, Oz directed her to a chair. "I helped you pack, remember? I made sure you got on the plane okay. We hugged. It was . . . difficult."

"But you weren't even there!" Willow insisted. "You were in, like, Bucharest or, or Istanbul or something. You don't even know what's going on!"

"You mean that you nearly destroyed the world with your black magicks because you thought Warren had killed Xander? I was there for that."

Karen's part! 9!! 


	2. Parts 7 through 12

Title: ...And Back Again

Authors: the OzMIA RR gang: Lily, Vashti, Karen, MD, quantumLiz, Tabitha, and Little Faith.

Spoilers: Through "Same Time, Same Place"

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: The only thing we own is the weirdness.

Summary: Round Robin Fic from Oz: Missing In Action. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willow put her hands to her head. "This is too confusing!!! You left me for Veruca, Oz. You slept with her skanky ass to keep her from killing people..."

"You said you understood that!" Willow was shocked when Oz raised his voice. He never shouted. The look on his face was deafening. Taking a breath he continued, "That's why I stayed. You understood that wolf cried out for wolf and it was more animal then anything. I love you. How can you bring all this up again?" 

Willow started crying. "I don't know what's real anymore."

"Sh," Oz pulled her into a hug. Smoothing her hair, he whispered, "Don't be scared. None of this is real."

She pulled away from him. "What?"

"It's not real, any of it. This is just another one of my dreams, Willow. I have them every night. Sometimes I never left you. Sometimes you found me. Sometimes I never even met Veruca. Other times I save you from destroying the world. They're just dreams, Will. You don't love me anymore. I know that. But I still love you." He tried to hug her again and she backed up against the wall. Sadness bled from his green eyes. "Course this one has to be a nightmare."

"Why?"

Oz stared at her. "Because in my fantasy ... when I'm kissing you..."

"I'm kissing you." Willow's heart melted. "Oh, Oz. I must have tapped into your dreams... Everything's connected." She reached out and took his hand. Lightening flashed between them and Oz woke up in his New York motel room.

"Wow." Oz sat up. "That one was intense." He tripped over a bunch of English wildflowers growing out of his carpet. 

"Oz..." the flowers whispered.

Oz blinked. Leaning down to touch one...

MD's turn!! Crack may have played a role...)

. . .he strained his super cool ears, hoping to hear the flowers whisper again. They did.

"Oz," they repeated. Oz stared, wondering why these particular flowers had English accents.

"Well, we're from England, stupid," said the flowers, this time less in a whisper and more in an exasperated, yet flowery, tone.

*Did you flowers just read my mind?* Oz thought. Of course, he didn't say it out loud, because that would have compromised his little experiment.

"Duh," said the flowers. The use of a decidedly un-British slang word was a little jarring.

"Why are you growing out of my carpet?" Oz asked.

"Why are you talking out loud?" the flowers asked. It was odd; there were over a dozen flowers there, but they all spoke in perfect unison.

*Sorry* Oz thought. The flowers, if it is possible to imagine, nodded at him with a satisfied air.

"We are growing out of your carpet because we were planted here," the flowers explained. "Sort of a gift for you."

*From who?* Oz thought.

"Whom," the flowers corrected. They waited patiently for Oz to correct his mental grammar.

*From whom?* thought Oz.

"The love of your life," said the flowers. They broke unison then, as some of the flowers started winking teasingly at Oz, and others whistled, and still others shouted "you go, boy!"

*The love of my life...* Oz started. *And that's whom, exactly?*

"Who," the flowers corrected impatiently, joviality long gone in the face of careless phrasing.

*Who?* Oz insisted. In his head, he sounded loud.

"See for yourself," the flowers invited rather Britishly, and at once they all started swaying and turning until they suddenly began morphing together into some kind of shapeless mass. 

BAM! 

Just then, reality blipped with a flash of static, and Oz was no longer staring at a tangle of deforming flowers. No, a figure stood in their place now. It was a tall figure, and rather strapping.

Oz squinted.

"Giles?"

~~~~~~

part 11

"You're the love of my life?" The unflappable Oz regarded Giles steadily. His lips were ever so slightly parted, the only hint he might be startled.

"Good lord no," Giles said. He removed his glasses and wiped them. "I mean, I'm quite fond of you, but the age difference..." He ended with a flustered shrug.

Giles couldn't help but notice that Oz's perfect lips had gently and serenely closed.

"I've never thought age was particularly important."

"Oh dear," Giles mumbled faintly.

"Did you put the flowers in my carpet?" Oz's green eyes gleamed.

"Eww!" cried the flowers. "Him?! You think it's him?!" Giles managed to look alarmed and crushed at the same time.

"You can't suddenly switch teams!" cried the flowers. "You're not a poof!"

Oz walked over to Giles, grasped the man's lapels, and pulled him down for a searing kiss.

"Ugh!" cried the flowers. "Ptooey!" They writhed in a reddish mass, then managed to get themselves together long enough to form a picture of Willow's distraught face.

"Willow may have been the love of my life," Oz told them quietly and with a hint of danger. "That doesn't mean I'm going to ruin the rest of my live over her."

"Ah, Oz..." Giles mumbled. "I can't be your revenge against Willow. I'm sorry."

Oz smiled at him serenely. "Who said anything about revenge? I'm serious."

"Aieee!" screemed the flowers, all composure gone. They flowed together in the form of Willow's face again, and the ones that depicted her eyes turned black.

"You don't own me, Willow," Oz said to them.

There was a crack of thunder and the flowers disappeared. In their place levitated Willow, her red hair standing out in a short fuzzy halo around her tear-ravaged face.

"Oz!" she cried. "Look what you've done to me!"

Oz smiled sadly. "You've done it to yourself."

"How could you be gay?" she screamed. "Didn't I mean anything to you?!"

Giles coughed nervously. "I think I'll just be going."

part 12, by Tabitha

The Englishman was halfway to the door when his form rippled and vanished. Oz turned to look at Willow, but she disappeared in a similar fashion. The hotel room followed, first dissolving into a white room before molding itself into the old high school library. From there it turned into the Bronze, as seen from his place on stage before morphing into the book cage. Willow's old bedroom was next, followed by his room at the Dingoes house. Finally the wild shifting stopped in a comfortable-looking, if unfamiliar, living room. "Boy, you sure do have some weird dreams," came a voice from behind him. Turning, the werewolf looked at the young woman who was smiling brightly at him. "I didn't know this was all still a part of your sub-conscious. The things you can learn from a person's dreams can truly boggle the mind." The girl wandered around the room, twirling a long strand of curly red hair around her index finger. "Pretty stable mental construct, if I do say so myself. So, do I pass?" She turned back to him, watching him expectantly with sparkling blue eyes.

"Pass?" Oz quirked an eyebrow at this strange girl. While her name evaded him, something about her face was familiar.

"Y'know, Dad, do I pass dreamwalking? I observed your dreams, including that weird lightsaber thing, I halted a dream in progress, I created a stable mental construct, and I talked with you. Seems like I should pass, so you need to tell uncle Giles that I can move on to the next part of my teaching now. So wake up!"

Oz jerked, finding himself back in bed. "That's enough dreaming," he muttered, sliding out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom. Grabbing his toothbrush, he glanced at the mirror before doing a double take. Instead of one day's growth of stubble, he now sported a close-cropped beard. There were faint lines around his eyes and across his forehead, and the hair that should have been jet-black and in a spiky disarray was it's natural red and cut into something a teacher would sport. He lifted his free left hand up to touch his face, and then looked down at the gold ring on said hand. The door to the hotel room swung open as a short blonde woman walked in, brushing past him with an affectionate caress of his rear end.  
~~~~~~~~~~~   
end part 12 


	3. Parts 13 through 18

Title: ...And Back Again

Authors: the OzMIA RR gang: Lily, Vashti, Karen, MD, quantumLiz, Tabitha, and Little Faith.

Spoilers: Through "Same Time, Same Place"

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: The only thing we own is the weirdness.

Summary: Round Robin Fic from Oz: Missing In Action. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oz put his hands slowly onto his butt. Hmm. So it was his butt that the woman had touched, and apparently it hadn't been some sort of weird empathy thing going on.

"You okay?" the woman asked, concerned.

"Maybe." Oz looked at her. He held out his arm. "Pinch me."

"What?"

"Pinch me."

She tentatively reached out two fingers and put pressure on the skin of this forearm. He stared at his arm for a few seconds before shrugging.

"Hmmm."

The woman removed her fingers from where they had come to rest on his arm and   
felt his forehead with her palm. She looked into his eyes while she checked for a fever, and Oz had, for the first time since he had seen the woman, an odd sense of recognition.

"Oz, dear, come into the bathroom. I don't think you have a fever, but I want to be sure. Let's get the thermometer." She moved into the small hotel-room bathroom and he followed her. She reached into a toiletries case and pulled out the thermometer.

He sat on side of the bathtub, with the blonde between him and the mirror. He let her put the thermometer in his mouth and waited patiently for her to remove it. 

"Fever dreams?" he asked.

"What? No fever." She showed him the thermometer, safely at 98.6. She shrugged once more and left the room, mumbling something about getting ready for tonight. He stood up and caught his first glimpse in the mirror.

His hair was tame and close-cut. Slight wrinkles ran out from the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was still standing, looking at himself, when she popped back into the bathroom.

"Oz?"

And then he recognized her.  
**end thirteen**  
"Anya?"

She batted his hand away. "Stop that. It s only funny the first day after I change my hair color. And you liked the blond last week."

"Don t let him bother you," Oz heard.

He pushed past Anya. "Spike?"

"What about it?"

"Why are you in my house?"

"You livin in the hotel-room now, mate? Since when? Oi! Why don't anyone ever tell me anything anymore? Anyanka...!"

Anya stormed past Oz. "Don t blame me! He s not really living here anyway. He s just confused still. A little."

"You check him for a fever?"

"Of course. Don t you trust me?"

"Not as far as I can throw you."

"Oh Spike!" Anya sat on the vampire s lap, "You say the sweetest thi--"

"Um, not to interrupt," Oz said, interrupting them from the bathroom door, "but could someone lend a little clarity to the moment?"

The couple turned to him. "Is it just me or is he a card short of a deck," Spike whispered into Anya s ear.

"I d say a whole book," she whispered back.

"I can hear you."

Spike frowned, chagrined. "I thought we agreed you wouldn't listen in on private conversations anymore. That s right rude, mate."

"Will someone just explain what s going on?!" Oz said, uncharacteristically angry, and his voice unusually hoarse. Like maybe he was old enough to have a near-adult kid.

Who, like the proverbial devil, appeared. "What s wrong, Dad?"

"Where s you re mother?"

"At home. Why?"

"Call her."

"I thought you too weren t speaking."

Oz looked to Anya and Spike for confirmation. They were too busy confirming each other s necks. He turned back to his daughter. "Call her anyway."

A phone appeared in his daughter s hand. "Mom, don t hang up. Dad wants to talk to you. He s been acting all funny since our dreamwalk."

"Sweety, you know your father and I aren t--"

"He *told* me to call you. It s gotta be important right?"

Oz knew that voice.

*Sigh* "All right, put your father on."

His daughter handed him the phone. Which had pictures. Moving pictures that we glaring up at him somewhere between annoyed and angry. 

"Oz, this had better be important."

And were those flowers behind her smiling?

Oz opened her mouth to say her name....

*fin fourteen*

"Faith?"

The dark-haired slayer stared at him expectantly. "I don't have time for this, so just get it out."

Oz nodded, more to himself than to anyone currently watching. "I think I was pulled into the future. Is that a problem with anyone?"

"Pulled into the future?"

"Or I'm having a dream of Dorothy Gayle proportions," the werewolf said, sinking onto the unoccupied hotel bed. "Should have stuck with being a Jedi."

"Jedi? Oz, if this is some strange, Xander-worthy plot to make me feel sorry for you, it's not working."

"Wait, wait." The daughter Oz didn't remember having took this opportunity to interrupt. "I think I know what's going on."

end part 15

Oz's daugher grimaced, "Dad I think you've had something inserted into your brain. Didn't the Initiative have you for a while back in the late 90's?"

Oz stared at her. "They only had me for a second and I kinda don't like remembering that day. Willow turned out to be gay and cruel... Riley saved my life, but I spent most of the day cold, nake and alone." Oz clamped his mouth shut. He'd been talking too much for him and that made him think he was being suspiscious. He would have to eye himself carefully in the mirrors from now on. He might be shifty. 

"Bear with me Dad. Maybe you got a chip in you and it's going wrong. That's why you're hallucinating and forgetting who my mom is and thinking it's Faith or whatever... You're not crazy. You're malfunctioning." She beamed and twinkled her blue eyes at him.

Oz stared around the room that had settled into a comfortable living room not unlike the one at Buffy's house. Oz sat down in a squashy chair. "See, that doesn't work. Spike's chip kept him from killing people..."

"And?"

Oz shrugged, "I've killed a lot of people since Willow broke my heart."

Everyone stared at him. "What?" His daughter asked, her lip trembling.

Oz nodded, gripping the arm rests. "Ten at least. I ate three of them...Rough mornings. Training for control broke a few... eggs."

Faith laughed, "Way to go Oz! You're F*cked up!"

Oz's daughter fell to the floor and melted away.

Seriously f*cked up.

"I don't understand any of this." Oz told the puddle that used to be his daughter.

"That's okay, I can explain it..." Said...  
end 16

Said Giles as he crossed his legs at the ankle. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkercheif from his pocket.

"Are you really Giles?" Oz asked.

"As far as I know."

Oz got up and looked at himself in the hall mirror. Nope, not shifty. He wasn't high either. His pupils weren't dilated enough. 

"You're you too. If you were wondering."

Oz pinched himself.

"And you're quite awake."

"What year is it," Oz asked as he sat across from Giles again.

"That's what got us all into this mess in the first place, don't you think?" Giles uncrossed his legs and sat foreward, his arms resting on his knees. "What year do you think it is?"

"2002. Weren't you supposed to explain everything to me?"

"Oh yes, I did say that, didn't I. Quite the slip up. I must admit I had no intention of explaining anything to you at all."

Oz would have been shocked, but his shock meter was broken. He kind of missed it. For a moment he wondered where he could go to get it fixed. He asked Giles.

"No where around here, I imagine. Although perhaps Buffy could do it for you."

"Buffy's here?"

"Why wouldn't your sister be here?"

Tempted as he was to say "MY WHAT?!" it came out more as a raised eyebrow. And a vague choking sound that might or might not have been really dangerous. Until he realized it was a stomach-growling sound and that he was hungry. "You wouldn't happen to have any food?"

"I believe Willow brought something with her. It should be in the kitche--"

"Willow's here?"

"Of course. She's your...."

end 17

"...home! Everyone!" Willow shut her eyes. Opening them one at a time, she noticed the extreme absence of people. She could hear Dawn watching TV in the other room, but, other than that, everything was quiet. She sighed and turned to go upstairs, but stopped when she noticed that there was one other person in the room.

"I thought I told everyone to go home," she said, half to herself.

"My home."

"What?" Willow was beyond confused.

"Giles. He said you were my...my home, I guess." Oz shrugged. "It kind of makes sense now, but...weird."

Willow was still confused, but now she was smiling. After all those years, and all that confusion, and all that they had both done, he could still melt her heart right into a puddle. Whether or not she was actually interested in him anymore as more than a friend, it was always nice to hear that you were someone's home.

"What happened to the...the," Oz began, "...nevermind."

"What?"

"Well, before...you told everyone to go home, and then we talked about you being in England, and I knew all about it even though I had no idea what you were talking about, and then I was with these flowers who were talking...I think you were crying about something...and I had a daughter, she was beautiful...but she was confused too...and Faith and Anya and Spike were there, but I may or may not have been living in a hotel. I don't know. And I may have had a fever. I was old, but then I wasn't. I was with Giles, and he said you were my something, but then you said, 'home,' which is what you said the first time, and I was right back where I started from." Oz took a deep breath. It had been a long time since he had said that much in one go. "Does that make any sense at all?"

"Not really," Willow admitted, "but this has been a weird day for everyone."

"A glitch in the Matrix?" Oz suggested.

"Nah, I'm pretty sure this one was all me." Willow looked at the floor, then at Oz again. "So, now you're here."

"Here I am," Oz confirmed.

"Well, I could use some coffee..."

She paused and shook off the weirdness of the day, grabbing her jacket off of the kitchen counter.

"You could probably use some too, after all that zipping around you did. Espresso Pump sound good?"

"The best."

He smiled and followed her out the door.

*The End!* 


End file.
